This is what I saw in the image Ben.
Steps:
- moved the finch down into the flowers more
- softened up the flowers and masked out the finch
- cropped it
- and a few more minor steps
- added a vignetting

I really enjoy these Ben, it helps me look at things in a different way and also how I would approach in the field...Thank you!

Staff Member

Late to the party on this one, but here is my take (all edits performed in Lightroom
Classic CC):

1) I thought the background color looked strange (although without knowing what the background actually was, who's to say?) But I tweaked it to a more blue type cooler look

2) cropped to accentuate the bird and lose some of the featureless background. I also found the pink blossoms that are way OOF to be distracting, so cropped those out too. Of course, the 5DSr can take some serious cropping.

3) added some clarity, a little vibrance, and a little contrast while dropping the blacks some

4) added a tweak of dehaze, that serves to bring the blue background up a little more

5) Used the HSL tool to get the hue on the background looking less magenta

6) sharpened some, after masking the background to avoid adding noise there

Staff Member

This is what I saw in the image Ben.
Steps:
- moved the finch down into the flowers more
- softened up the flowers and masked out the finch
- cropped it
- and a few more minor steps
- added a vignetting

I really enjoy these Ben, it helps me look at things in a different way and also how I would approach in the field...Thank you!

Click to expand...

Hey Amy, I like what you were going for and I like all of it except the finch seems softened too. Did you somehow not mask it out from the softening? Get that finch sharper and this will be really sweet.

Staff Member

Late to the party on this one, but here is my take (all edits performed in Lightroom
View attachment 14590
Classic CC):

1) I thought the background color looked strange (although without knowing what the background actually was, who's to say?) But I tweaked it to a more blue type cooler look

2) cropped to accentuate the bird and lose some of the featureless background. I also found the pink blossoms that are way OOF to be distracting, so cropped those out too. Of course, the 5DSr can take some serious cropping.

3) added some clarity, a little vibrance, and a little contrast while dropping the blacks some

4) added a tweak of dehaze, that serves to bring the blue background up a little more

5) Used the HSL tool to get the hue on the background looking less magenta

6) sharpened some, after masking the background to avoid adding noise there

7) added a very small amount of NR in the luminance

8) exported, with low sharpening for screen

ML

Click to expand...

Hey Mike, pretty cool work here, thanks for listing the steps. The only thing I see is there is a magenta cast on the finch, I would pull that out if it was mine.

What a lovely lens this 100-400 is. If Nikon had one as good I woud be tempted to get it. Lovely shot Ben and I have not done much to it a fair bit of local sharpening and a touch of saturation. I did start removing and moving bits of foliage but then cropped that part out so just your original almost. Ken

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